


enter taco

by hailingstars



Series: unbelievably unlikely (febuwhump 2020) [15]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Food Fight, Gen, Light Angst, Mind Games, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Peter throws a taco, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Tony is alive, febuwhump 2020, he's v frustrated tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-19 10:09:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22776106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: “You didn’t keep score? Back in my day hitting a teacher with an entree was worth at least fifty points.”“Can we just go?”Mr. Stark frowned, and rubbed one of his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Not until you tell me what on earth could’ve possessed you, polite angel of a teenager that you are, to start a riot in your school cafeteria.”“I didn’t start it.”His eyes drifted out the window and over onto his school. Out of all the ways they could’ve punished him, a suspension had to be the absolute worse. Peter had already missed out on enough of life. Now he had to miss out on more life.“Your principal said you threw the first taco.”ORPeter throws a taco at Brad Davis, and Tony gets to the root of his teenage angst.Febuwhump day 17: mind games
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: unbelievably unlikely (febuwhump 2020) [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619662
Comments: 28
Kudos: 368





	enter taco

Peter stepped out of Midtown high and into the brisk, Spring air. His socks squished against his shoes, still soaking wet with chocolate milk. Bits of cheese matted chucks of his hair together, and his shirt smelled like ground beef, no matter how hard he’d tried to clean it in the sink in the boy’s bathroom.

There was only so much he could do with the cheap liquid soap that smelled like Fruit loops and the tiny sink and the small window of time Mr. Harrington had so graciously given him before marching him off to the front office, where Principal Morita had sentenced him to a three day suspension so he could “think about appropriate meal time conduct.”

He aimed a frustrated kick at the trash can before marching towards the parking lot, where Mr. Stark and his car waited. When he pulled open the front door, he saw he’d covered it with black plastic that crinkled as Peter pulled his backpack in his lap and sat down.

“Really Mr. Stark?”

“Can’t have you getting gross school food all over the leather,” he told him. Mr. Stark’s eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses, but he grinned at Peter and kept one hand loosely on the steering wheel. “So, you got suspended?”

“Oh my god,” said Peter, with an eye roll. He pulled the seatbelt over his body and clicked it into place. “I’m never telling you anything ever.”

Mr. Stark chuckled, leaving Peter to silently mourn the day he’d told him about all the Captain America PSAs Midtown made them watch.

“Don’t be like that Pete,” said Mr. Stark. “Uh, did you at least… win the food fight?”

“I don’t think anyone wins in a food fight.”

“You didn’t keep score? Back in my day hitting a teacher with an entree was worth at least fifty points.”

“Can we just go?”

Mr. Stark frowned, and rubbed one of his thumbs against the steering wheel. “Not until you tell me what on earth could’ve possessed you, polite angel of a teenager that you are, to start a riot in your school cafeteria.”

“I didn’t start it.”

His eyes drifted out the window and over onto his school. Out of all the ways they could’ve punished him, a suspension had to be the absolute worse. Peter had already missed out on enough of life. Now he had to miss out on more.

“Your principal said you threw the first taco.”

“I didn’t – I mean I _did_ ,” said Peter. He let out a breath of frustration. “But Flash was the one who screeched out food fight the first chance he got. No one would have even noticed I threw the taco if he wouldn’t have yelled out like that.”

“Except maybe the person you hit.”

“Brad deserved it, anyway,” said Peter, sounding far more petulant than he wanted to, as he shoved his bookbag down on the floorboard next to his chocolate milk stained shoes. “Mr. Stark, he’s playing mind games with MJ.”

Peter remembered the second it had all started.

He’d been sitting down at a table with Ned – not their table – some different table they’d been forced to sit at because the one that used to belong to them got snatched up when they were blipped. He’d been listening to Ned talk about something with his family, when he’d looked and saw Brad talking to MJ from across the room.

It’d been petty, for him to feel so frustrated, so angry, but Peter hadn’t cared, or at least, not at that exact moment.

One second there was a taco on his lunch tray, the next it was flying across the room and hitting Brad straight in the jaw and Flash was yelling about food fights.

“The decathlon girl?” asked Mr. Stark. “Something tells me she isn’t falling for it, kid.”

He knew that, logically. He knew that MJ thought for herself, more than most people, more than even Peter, but he couldn’t shake the injustice of it all, that somehow Brad seemed to be smoother with his words, more capable, when just months ago, in Peter’s mind, he’d been five grades below them.

“Can we just go now? Please?”

Mr. Stark gave him one last look, losing his grin. His expression folded into something more serious, as if he were just realizing Peter were actually upset.

“Where to? Your apartment, or the penthouse?”

Both were home. That was one of the good things Peter had in his life post blip. More family, more homes.

“The penthouse.”

Mr. Stark pulled the car out of park, turned the music up, and the two of them left Midtown High in their dust.

*

Peter was lying on his bed, freshly showered, with his eyes inside his cellphone, with his thumb hovering above MJ’s name.

A debate went back and forth in his own head about how to phrase his apology in a way that didn’t make him sound as pathetic as he felt.

He was deleting apology number six, praying to the gods of the universe that MJ hadn’t somehow been watching the type bubbles, when Morgan Stark walking into his room. She cleared her throat and demanded his attention.

“Daddy said you had a bad day at school,” she told him. She climbed up on the bed to sit next to him. “And that you smelled like Fruit loops and garbage.”

“I took a shower since then.”

“That’s good,” said Morgan. “I don’t really like people who smell.”

“Brad smells,” said Peter, still frustrated, still feeling petty, but if he supposed if there was anyone who’d understand, it was Morgan. “I threw a taco at him.”

Morgan’s eyes lit up. “Really? That’s so cool!”

“Morgan no,” he sputtered out, quickly changing his mind. He cursed himself and his ability to somehow make everything worse. “It’s not cool. It’s very, very uncool.”

“Sounds cool to me,” said Morgan, with a careless shrug. “So you had a food fight? Like in the movies? Was it awesome?”

Peter laughed, despite his situation, despite feeling frustrated with himself for doing something so childish and immature, despite his complete lack of control over his own emotions.

“It was messy. All my clothes got ruined and I’m pretty sure my shoes are gonna smell like soured milk for the rest of my life.”

The excitement on Morgan’s face only grew and Peter could see he’d done nothing to prevent Morgan from going to her preschool the next day and starting a food fight with her fellow four-year-olds.

“I made something for you,” said Morgan. She outstretched her arm and opened her palm, revealing a bracelet weaved together with red and blue string. There was a foam spider bead hooked onto it. “Mom helped a little, but I did most the work.”

“Thanks Morgan,” he said, slipping it on his wrist. “I love it.”

Morgan beamed up at him, gave him something called a “cheering-up hug,” then bounced out of his room.

Peter smiled at the bracelet around his wrist. If there was one change brought about during the time Peter was dead that he was happy for, it was Morgan Stark, his little sister who was just as chaotic as he was.

The bracelet and the hug did their job. He did feel a bit better, a bit cheered up, only to melt back down into frustration when he went back to his cellphone, trying and failing a million times more to apologize to MJ.

*

It was hours later, and Peter had given up on his apology.

He was outside on his balcony, with his legs dangling off the ledge, and his head pressed up against the bars of the fence. The city down below was alive and the stars, though Peter couldn’t see them from all the light pollution, were hung in the sky with the moon.

He supposed he didn’t need to see them to know they were there, the same way he didn’t need to see Mr. Stark to know it was him who’d just stepped outside to join him.

Mr. Stark lowered himself to sit on the balcony floor next to him. “Friday told me you were out here sulking.”

“Not sulking,” said Peter. “Just thinking.”

“Ready to talk yet?” asked Mr. Stark. “All that thinking has to get a little lonely, especially for someone like you who can’t go two seconds without rambling.”

Peter took a deep breath before he let it all out, knowing Mr. Stark wouldn’t let it go until he knew what was up.

“You know how one day you’re just a regular kid, right? With asthma and glasses and who gets a shoved into lockers for talking too much? But then you wake up another day and you’re in space and taking down bad guys? And it doesn’t seem like so much of a change cause you can see all the little steps that got you there?”

Mr. Stark was quiet for a few second, before finally nodding his head. “Yeah, I think understand. One day I was boozing around at parties, then the next I was flying into wormholes.”

“Right,” said Peter, a rush of thankfulness pulsing through him. That was world was messed and different in a way he couldn’t always describe, but at least he had Mr. Stark, someone who could understand him in a way most people couldn’t.

“Except now I don’t know all the steps. One second I was on a field trip with my class and then the next half my class was off in college, but I’m still…” Peter lifted up his hands and looked at them, looked at the city down below. “I’m still the same but everything else is… so different.”

“Not everything – “

Peter cut him off before he could try and say anything comforting. “I’m behind, for the first time ever, in all my classes. I – I can’t keep up with being Spider-Man and school like I used to. This seventh grader is trying to date MJ and giving me speeches in the hallway about how I’m a flake – “

“-Enter taco,” said Mr. Stark, a sad sort of smile appearing on his face. He gave him a pat on the back. “It all makes sense now. Sounds like he really did deserve.”

He laughed, cursing the way that both Mr. Stark and Morgan had the ability to pull laughter from him when he felt like doing anything but.

“And now I’m gonna be even more behind,” said Peter, a crushing realization. “Now that I have to miss three days of assignments.”

“I talked to your school,” said Mr. Stark. “They’re willing to let you work on your class work from home.”

“But you can’t do that.”

“Uh, I think I can and I did.”

“That isn’t fair. A suspension with makeup work is just like – “

“-A break, and I can’t think of any else more deserving of one than Spider-Man.”

Peter looked back out at the city. It wasn’t that he wasn’t thankful that Mr. Stark talk to the school of his behalf. He was.

It was that he’d done something petty and wrong and if he were any other student, if he weren’t Mr. Stark’s intern, he’d be out of luck. That wasn’t right or fair, but before he could make another protest, Mr. Stark cut him off mid-thought.

“Don’t even bother trying to argue,” said Mr. Stark. “It’s not a discussion. I’m not gonna see you lying about the penthouse complaining about being bored the next three days.”

“Fine.”

“Good, glad we understand each other.” He gave him another shoulder pat. “And it’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna readjust, get used to things. Transitions, especially one like this, they’re never easy, but you’ll get through it.”

Peter nodded, feeling light in a way he hadn’t for a long time. Mr. Stark’s words weren’t anything he’d already told himself a thousand times, but they seemed more believable coming from Iron Man.

Mr. Stark stood up and offered him a hand. “What do you say we ditch this place and go out for some late-night snacks? Like we used to?”

“Okay,” said Peter, accepting Mr. Stark’s hand and letting him pull him up from the ground. Probably, Mr. Stark had noticed how he’d only picked at his dinner early, to upset to eat, or maybe he’d heard his stomach growl. “What were you thinking?”

“Something greasy and awful. Something we can never tell Pepper about,” he started, stopped. Hit Peter with a grin. “Taco Bell?”

“Seriously.” 

“Kid we spent this entire day talking about tacos and now I have cravings.”

“Guess that’s fair,” said Peter. He didn’t want to admit he had cravings too. That part of his regret about his actions was that he’d thrown the taco instead of eating it.

The two of them were halfway to the nearest Taco Bell when Peter’s phone pinged, and his spirits were lifted by a text from MJ congratulating him on his good aim and his good timing. It turned out she’d been very happy to be saved from an unwanted conversation, especially since it was in a chaotic and absurd way.

His apology wasn’t so hard to word after the ice was broken, and, as he walked down the New York City sidewalk, joking around with Mr. Stark, he felt it, a sense of peace in his chest, that had escaped him for far too long.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!
> 
> kudos and/or comments let me know what you think!! 
> 
> or [come yell at me on tumblr](https://hailing-stars.tumblr.com)


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